Platform-dependent data output

Question

In order to aid myself with displaying debugging information, I decided to create the following tiny function that would dynamically switch between displaying data in RStudio's internal data browser and simple character-based output, depending on capabilities of the platform, where my modules are being sourced at:

View <- function (...) {
  if (.Platform$GUI == "RStudio")
    View(...)
  else
    print(...)
}

This function is located, along with other utility functions, in the module <PROJ_HOME>/utils/debug.R. All modules that need these functions, include it via source("../utils/debug.R").

Running my project's code on my Amazon EC2 instance's Linux console is fine. However, running it on the same virtual machine via RStudio Server results in the following error message:

Error: evaluation nested too deeply: infinite recursion / options(expressions=)?
Error during wrapup: evaluation nested too deeply: infinite recursion / options(expressions=)?

It seems to me that R gets confused as to which View() function needs to be called. Initially, I assumed that RStudio overloads the utils::View() and I tried to call it explicitly, but it failed. Then I thought that RStudio somehow defines its View() implementation in global environment, so that it just needs to be called View() without package/library reference. However, as I you see, it doesn't work either. Another potential reason of the error might be that I overestimated the "smartness" of R in terms of my use of ... arguments.

So, what is wrong and how to fix it?

Answer 1

RStudio hooks the View function. One approach might be to see if anyone has overridden the View function from utils, and to call the override if it exists. What about this?

View <- if (identical(utils::View, View)) print else View